Snark
by Flatpickluvr
Summary: House writes an autobiography to help deal with stress. This is my first fan fiction. Please read and review!
1. The Autobiography of Dr Gregory House

Snark

Introduction

This is my first fan fiction, and I'll do my best to earn your kind, constructive reviews!

I find myself identifying closely with the character of House. I don't own any of the characters in this story. Some of the vignettes are based on past scripts from the show with a lot of my own experiences woven in. This is written in first person singular from House's perspective, and is influenced partly by "One Day One Room" and partly by the first half of Season 6.

I wrote this knowing that the character has a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology, and in my world, he chose both.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

While I hate biographies or autobiographies, I do like to read. I also love music, jazz in particular, and most of my free time is spent watching TV or with a guitar in hand, or at my piano. Few people ever see this part of me, though. I guard my privacy carefully. I'm not afraid of dealing with people. I'm afraid of the rejection I have always experienced every time I have tried to form close relationships. I'd rather keep them at a distance than wait until they get close enough to me to discover something they don't like about me. Yes, I've had relationships, but the only one I would have considered marrying was the one I half drove away and half let get away.

Some people seem to think that I don't want to deal with people because I'm ashamed of my disability. That's absurd, but let 'em think whatever they want to think. Yes, I had a terrible leg injury that left me with a permanent limp and chronic pain. The only people currently in my life that knew me before the infarction are my mom, Cuddy and Wilson, and they knew I was an introvert long before the infarction. Everyone else currently in my life came into my life after the infarction, and if they think I don't like to deal with people because of the leg, let 'em. I don't care.

Wilson thought I should have completed the first round of psychotherapy that was prescribed for me after my infarction but I only went to one session. I found it unhelpful, to say the least. It's nobody's business but mine why I found it unhelpful. I'd rather not sit in front of a bunch of strangers telling them what happened to me or what feelings I may be experiencing. Group therapy for PTSD is fine for some, particularly if they actually DO HAVE PTSD, but not for everyone, and not for people who don't have PTSD. I wish Wilson would have understood that and not tried to make me feel worse for not going back. The infarction and its resulting disability didn't make me any more depressed than I was before. The coping skills I used to try to deal with my depression might not be the same that most others would use, but what everyone seems to keep forgetting is that the only thing that matters is how *I* feel about myself, not how anyone else feels about me.

True, the vicodin caused delusions and hallucinations, but I was using the vicodin for physical pain relief because nothing else worked. I tried acupuncture, I tried TENS, I tried massage therapy, I tried every other kind of physical therapy that was prescribed for me; hell, I even tried that famous Ketamine therapy that works so well for most chronic pain sufferers. I had to go to Germany for that one, because Ketamine therapy hadn't been approved for use in the US yet. Physical therapy was able to restore my ability to ambulate to the extent that I am able, but not without some form of pain relief. I knew when I started the vicodin that even short term use could cause hallucinations and delusions, and I knew that long term use could well cause hepatotoxicity as well as other serious complications. Believe me, had non-pharmacologic pain relief measures worked, I'd never have popped ANY pills. I had to resort to vicodin because nothing else worked.

Everyone I know seems to want to focus on the fact that I'm still a jerk (superficially, anyway) after my discharge from Mayfield. I guess they thought I was a Jekyll and Hyde kind of guy, that maybe once the Jekyll guy left for good and I changed into Hyde permanently, I'd be this nicer and gentler touchy-feely Hyde. Well, personalities don't change. Coping skills might change once we're shown the skills necessary to cope with chronic depression, and sometimes SSRIs can alter a person's mood, but personalities don't change. I love my quirky personality. I love that my personality hasn't changed. I love that I have witty one liners I toss out at will. I love that I still look at the ill human body as a puzzle that I can't quit until I solve it. People tell me all the time that I don't give a damn about people, but I do. I don't like seeing people suffer. I just don't care that nobody takes the time to look underneath my barbs to see that I do care. If they're so quick to write me off as an asshole because all they know about me is that I have a disability and I say jerky things, then let 'em feel however they want to.

When I was in Mayfield, I told Nolan that my session could last 50 years because I was the sum of all my life experiences. Part of that is true; my 50 years of life experience have contributed to make me who I am, good AND bad. That's not all there is to me, though. I'm not sure anyone wants to hear it, since nobody has ever shown enough interest in me to want to listen to me when I do open up except Nolan. Since I do like to read, though, I thought maybe I might like to write as well, so since nobody else wants to hear me TALK about it, the next best action is to write it down. Here we go.


	2. I was born in

Chapter 2

I'm not going to start off with "I was born in…" because nobody gives a damn where anyone was born. Since this is turning out to be an autobiography, and I normally hate autobiographies, I'd rather write one that doesn't make me want to pitch it into a burning fire after the first chapter!

I was a military kid. I won't say a military "brat". This implies that all children of parents in the military are brats. I wasn't, in any sense of the word, a brat. The fact that I had no siblings is of no importance.

I had a particularly difficult rape case in the clinic once, and in order to try to help the woman I said some things I've never told anyone else except Mom. Yes, it was true that my dad employed very harsh methods of discipline. It's called child abuse, and sharing that information with a complete stranger who had also been abused was the only way I thought I could get through to her. But my dad wasn't all bad. There were good times too. I guess you just have to take the good and the bad together, and learn how to get past the bad.

I told Foreman, after my dad died, that my father and I were not close, which is true, we were not close. I even told him that I didn't like the man. While it's true that we weren't close, it's not entirely true that I didn't like the man. He was a tough disciplinarian and didn't know the difference between proper methods of discipline and child abuse, but still there were good times too. I guard my privacy, and everyone lies, but everyone doesn't lie ALL THE TIME, and I have not lied about my parents. I just didn't feel like it was anyone's business and that was the quickest way I knew to get my team to leave me alone.

I wasn't close to my dad because when I was young, I had a hard time getting past the bad. I didn't learn to get past the bad until I was a young adult.

My mom stayed home and I was closer to her than I was to my dad. She knew what Dad was doing to me, but in those days, the line between discipline and child abuse was a little more blurred. What most people would consider abuse today was, in those days, usually considered discipline.

I doubt that she liked team sports, but she went with me to all my games and most of my practices. She went with me to most of my piano recitals and when I joined my first band, in eighth grade, she helped me haul my guitar and gear to every band practice. I doubt that she enjoyed trucking me and my musical gear around everywhere, but I bet she enjoyed listening to us after we gelled as a band and started sounding halfway decently good.

Oddly enough, even though I was accepted at two top notch medical schools, I never enjoyed school. I think I was misunderstood by my teachers, by and large. I witnessed a death in the family at age 5, and when I started school at age 6, my mother chose to share that information with my teachers because I daydreamed a lot in school. I guess they thought my daydreaming had something to do with the death I witnessed. Rather than find out why I was daydreaming, they chose to send me to the convent (yes, believe it or not I went to Catholic school) during the day to take naps. They thought I was tired! Being sent to the convent to sleep didn't help, but they didn't know what to attribute my daydreaming to, so the school told her to send me to a child psychiatrist. The only two effects I got from those sessions with the psychiatrist was that I got to play with action figures a lot at his office, and news of my sessions got out to my classmates, and I was made fun of for that. My IQ was tested, probably because they thought I was some sort of idiot that would be better off riding the short bus to "special" school, but the result was quite the opposite. I finally had a teacher in the third grade who recognized that I was daydreaming because I was bored, and he introduced me to the kind of music and art in the classroom that sparked my interest. He recognized that I was daydreaming during spelling, language and history lessons because I was already well beyond the material we were covering. I had been reading since about the age of 4, so by the time I was in third grade I was reading at about the sixth grade level and was well beyond the material in third grade reading, language and history textbooks. I got excellent grades with this teacher, but got poor grades with other teachers because nobody else knew how (or cared enough) to spark my interest in school like he did.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a teacher who obviously hated teaching, hated us, and didn't give a damn whether any of us learned anything or not. She showed this by not disciplining anyone, and letting all 35 of us (yes, there were about 35 in her class) do whatever they wanted. Those of us who tried to obey and learn something were subjected to other students who threw erasers, talked anytime they wanted to, threw spitballs, kicked us, and bullied us much more harshly on the playground or while walking on our way home. Most of this happened right under the teacher's nose while the teacher did absolutely nothing to stop it.

At the same time, in the sixth grade, I began to compete in and win spelling bees and began to lead Masses with my music in church. Though I'm pretty much a confirmed atheist now, I grew up Catholic. I played soccer, volleyball and basketball to some extent, but was never as good at or as interested in team sports as I was in language arts and music. Mom, my piano teacher and one of my elementary school teachers encouraged my interests in music and language arts.

By the time I got to high school, I was pretty well convinced that I wanted to be a musician. Some might consider this odd, coming from someone who went to two medical schools and ended up graduating from the University of Michigan with an MD degree and two very academically demanding subspecialties, but medicine was really pretty far down on the totem pole of my interests when I was in high school. I really didn't even seriously consider medicine as a possible career until I was a senior in high school and mistakenly started listening to people tell me that I needed "something to fall back on" if music didn't work out professionally for me. If I'd listened to my heart instead of to everyone else, I'd be playing music professionally and never would have heard of PPTH. Some might think that I'm sorry I wound up in medicine, but I'm not. I just wish that I'd have had more of an opportunity to try music as a profession. The high school that I attended was not the one I would have chosen. I went there because my mother wanted me to. They had one or two music classes, none of which I was interested in, and they were not particularly interested in preparing students for careers in music or the arts at the time. They were more interested in preparing students for careers in the sciences. Thus, I found myself taking chemistry and biology and all the science courses I could, even though I didn't excel in them quite like I suspect people think I should have. I applied to many medical schools in my senior year of high school, and was pleasantly surprised to have been accepted at quite a few undergrad programs.

Yes, it was quite a feather in my cap to have been accepted to the University of Michigan after a fairly uneventful undergraduate education spent largely sailing through my classes, working part time in the campus bookstore and playing music on the weekends. That's where I met Cuddy. I should say, that's where I started this evil rollercoaster of a relationship I would call my association with Dr. Lisa Cuddy. I met her when I started working in their bookstore, and she stalked me by enrolling in one of my endocrinology classes just to sit next to me. I had a one night stand with her and planned on calling her back, but unfortunately I wasted my opportunity at Michigan by cheating on a paper and being arrogant enough to think I wouldn't get CAUGHT cheating. I wrote an excellent paper on the topic of health care funding in the United States, explaining the current loopholes and how it could be improved for everyone's benefit, but I was convinced that my prof hated me and would give me a lower grade because she disliked me. To test my theory, I swapped my paper with another classmate's. To my complete shock, I got an A even with a paper I didn't actually write. Even though I didn't realize it at the time, the classmate with whom I swapped papers also got an A on the paper that I actually wrote. The reason I didn't realize it at the time was because I was caught and expelled for what they called "plagiarism". I didn't find out that my theory about my professor hating me was wrong until after I was expelled. Sometimes life takes us down very different paths, and I never really forgot about Cuddy but she was at Michigan and I wasn't, so it seemed a bit awkward to try to keep in contact with her.

I drifted about with my buddy and bandmate Dylan Crandall, playing gigs wherever we could land them, before I decided to try to enroll in and finish med school at Hopkins. I had an uneventful internship before I decided to specialize in nephrology and infectious disease. I did residencies in both specialties and fellowships in both specialties after that, and for a few years I had a successful private practice in infectious disease. I was actually good enough at infectious diseases that I developed this odd ability to diagnose unusual infections based, in part, on epiphanies that I would experience any time of the day or night. Sometimes I came up with the diagnosis during a night time dream, or based on something I overheard someone else say.

I got tired of always having to be everyone's "go to" guy, the one that everyone turned to when nobody else could help them, because by the time they got to me, they were usually so sick that even though I could always make the correct diagnosis, the treatment was usually too late to help them. I would always feel terrible and be blamed when the patient died, even though the fault was usually with the 16 doctors who misdiagnosed the patient before the patient finally got to me. People started calling me a misanthrope, someone who hated other people, but really all I was trying to do was avoid having to deal with people who hated me for something that wasn't my fault in the first place.

For example, I hated seeing people with MRSA (methycillin resistant staph aureus) die from septic shock simply because other doctors failed to make the diagnosis in time for routine antibiotics to help them. By the time the patients would make it to my attention, they'd be on life support. I'd make the correct diagnosis, but the treatment that would have helped them had it been caught earlier would have been long since rendered ineffective. I had many successful (some called them "miraculous") cures but some would die, even with the correct diagnosis and the correct treatment. Instead of not caring, I cared too much about those that didn't make it. I chose not to talk about my feelings because nobody asked or cared enough to listen. I told Wilson at the time that I hated this feeling that I was getting patients that I could have saved if they'd been referred to me earlier, but Wilson was probably too engrossed in his specialty to care about the fact that I was being eaten alive by MY specialty.

Then I had the leg infarction, and as a result I lost most of my right quadriceps muscle and the ability to walk without a significant limp and even more significant pain. For almost a year after the infarction, I debated about when I should go back to work and how my department would have to change because I needed help handling the workload. I'd never needed more than one fellow in my department, but suddenly I had to face the fact that I couldn't be on my feet all day. Before the infarction, I could easily handle at least 12 hours on my feet seeing to my normal caseload of about 20 critically ill patients, with one fellow in my department, plus covering nights on call. Afterward, I certainly couldn't be on my feet long enough to see to the needs of my previous caseload, even with one fellow. I was forced to admit that I needed to hire more fellows, not really because I just wanted more fellows, but because I was no longer physically capable of handling the workload without more help. And even with two additional fellows, I had to bite an even bigger bullet and admit to myself that I was not physically capable of handling my previous caseload no matter how many fellows I hired. I had to cut my caseload down to just a few patients. I'd rather have nails shoved in my fingers than admit that I couldn't handle my previous caseload because of my physical limitation, but again, those in my life at the time didn't bother to look deep enough to see why I had to do that, and I saw no reason to tell them. I figured if I have to tell the doctor who took care of me during my infarction (and is now my superior) that my leg won't cooperate for 12 or more hours on my feet, then what the hell. I'll do what's best for me, and the hell with what she thinks.

When I was forced by my body to cut down my caseload in infectious disease, people told me I was being "too choosy", that I was turning down referrals because they were "beneath me". My choices were quickly becoming apparent:

Start using a wheelchair, give up my remaining ability to ambulate, and keep the current caseload,

Keep using the cane 24/7, cut down on the caseload and put up with the constant pain and the attitudes, or

Leave PPTH altogether.

#1 was out of the question because the remaining muscles that would not be used would have atrophied, causing even more pain and more disability in the long run.

#3 was kind of out of the question too, since by the time I'd had the infarction, my reputation for being the best "go to" guy in the business had also kinda, sorta, been balanced out by my reputation for being oh, let's say, _difficult_ to work with. I guess few administrators like doctors who think they're idiots! Makes it kinda hard to get hired anywhere else. Guess I burned a few too many bridges. Kinda made PPTH my best employment opportunity, so kinda left me with #2 being my most viable choice.

Hell of a choice, you know? Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

But it was the only choice I could make.


	3. My only choice?

Chapter 3

But it wasn't the only choice I could make. I couldn't work much past 3 pm because my leg would give out, but I spent every free moment at home boning up on nephrology.

After I passed my nephrology board certification exam, I just dropped the bomb on my fellows one day. I walked in to my outer office, slammed my cane down on the table to see how high I could make Thirteen jump, and threw a YELLOW case file at Foreman. Should'a shot some footage of that. I could have earned quite a following on Youtube. Thirteen peeling herself off the ceiling, shouting "don't scare me like that", Foreman looking at the yellow case file with surprise like he'd never seen the color yellow before in his life, and Chase off in the corner looking completely bored and acting like "hey, this is House, why is anyone surprised at anything he does?"

I said "Hey, pee is yellow, right? Whoever heard of blue pee? Well, at least normal pee is yellow. I got a new case for us."

And with that, announced our foray into nephrology.


	4. Painful Pee Guy

Chapter 4

I will never forget our first nephrology case. To start with, I thought nephrology would mean fewer hours on my feet. There are way more nephrologists than infectious disease specialists. I did the math and figured there'd be a smaller caseload, and less need for me to be on my feet 12 or more hours a day.

Cuddy looked at it like I'd have more time to spend (waste, actually, but let's not quibble over semantics) in the clinic.

Which led to a very fun game, finding new and ever more interesting ways to hide from Cuddy.

See, our new patient was a minister. Well, sort of, anyway. Whoever heard of a minister who no longer believed in God? I found him in the clinic. He was there because he was having pain while urinating. I was hiding in the men's room in the clinic. Cuddy would think I was working in the clinic, and wouldn't bug me, so it was a win-win situation. I was in the men's room, in a stall, with my PSP playing Need for Speed, and this guy started screaming in the stall next to me. One thing led to another and voila', we had our new patient.

Painful Pee guy had been to at least three emergency rooms and five different doctors in the last few days, and told all of them that it felt like he was being cut with knives every time he urinated. All of them apparently did like most doctors would do, they got urine cultures and started treating him for what was presumed to be a urinary tract infection. Nobody followed up adequately with him, however, or else they would have known that his pain was only getting worse. On his last visit to another emergency room, the doc there called security and had him escorted off the grounds, because the patient was yelling that he needed narcotics for his pain. They told him he hadn't given the antibiotics enough time to work, and that he shouldn't need narcotics for pain relief, and that he was just a drug seeker.

So Painful Pee guy winds up screaming in the stall next to me, in the men's room in our clinic here at Chez PPTH.

I briefly considered doing our DDX right there in the men's room, but with Cameron and Thirteen in there too, Cuddy would have followed the long line of guys waiting to get in and then, she would have found me. I had to move on to Plan B – get the guy admitted and do our differential diagnosis in our plain old boring office.

Cameron did the guy's initial history, and my other fellows helped with the physical exam. Cameron found out the minister who no longer believes in God had just been handed divorce papers, and tried to kill himself with a big bottle of antifreeze. Antifreeze is sweet, which is why it should be kept out of the reach of babies, dogs and cats. They love it. The label on the bottle didn't say anything about keeping it out of the reach of morons. See, if you're going to try to off yourself, there are faster and less painful ways to do that. Drinking antifreeze will do the trick, but not without days of agony first. Antifreeze causes crystals to form in the kidneys and bladder, blocking the flow of urine. Painful Pee guy was trying to pee crystals. When enough crystals have formed in the kidneys, they don't even produce urine anymore. Painful Pee guy had gone about four days before he showed up in our clinic and we diagnosed the renal failure caused by antifreeze ingestion.

We started treatment right away with IV alcohol (ethanol) and temporary dialysis. The guy recovered physically.

As I wrote earlier, I'm not much into visiting patients if I don't have to. Hearing someone scream bloody murder in the stall next to me in the men's room did, however, peak my curiousity. After he was admitted, I snuck in to his room to see him after I told my team I was going home for the day.

The guy saw my cane, which is usually the first thing anyone sees about me and usually immediately makes them change their expression and treat me differently. Not this guy, though. The first thing he screamed at me was to give him a shot of morphine and let him die, because God didn't give a damn about him so why should anyone else. My team had just started the IV ethanol, which causes the pleasant (or unpleasant, depending on how you look at it) side effect of making the patient drunk. I knew the ethanol would hit him soon, so I needed to talk to him before he drifted off to sleep. I also knew any more morphine, beyond what my team had already given him, would potentiate the sedative effect of the ethanol, and wouldn't be good for him.

While he could still stay awake long enough to listen, I plopped down on a chair next to his bed, put my feet up on his bed and asked him why he did it. I won't go into the details about why he did it here, save to say that my team found me in his room hours after the patient went to sleep, still sitting in the chair with my feet up on his bed, thinking about what he told me.


	5. Memories of Me

Chapter 5

**A/N – Thank you so much for the reviews! I'm stunned! I'd like to clarify something. It isn't my intention to write House out-of-character, but I am writing this story in ****sort**** of an alternate universe. Don't compare the facts in the story word-for-word with any episodes. It's loosely based on several episodes and a lot based on my experience as a nurse in critical care and nephrology. I've seen every episode at least 20 times, so I know the facts as they were depicted on the show. I specifically wanted to keep him in character but with a few changes to the facts about his life that we know from the show. It always interested me that House stated early on in the show that he had two specialties, and one of them was nephrology.**

**Standard disclaimer applies. Don't own any of the characters, but sure wish I did.**

**Enjoy, and keep writing all those reviews! I love it!**

I remember our first nephrology case so well because Painful Pee guy reminded me too much of myself. I could kind of distance myself from all my previous infectious disease and other weird cases but Painful Pee Guy really got to me.

The previous misdiagnosis of "drug seeking behavior", the four day delay in getting diagnosed and treated for his renal failure due to ethylene glycol poisoning, the screaming in pain, the messed up personal life… all of this was dragging up memories that I thought I had put behind me. I wasn't sure how ready I was to admit how closely I identified with him. Part of me wanted to escape as fast as I could out of that room and never see the guy again, and another part of me couldn't leave him alone. Painful Pee Guy's wife had just served him divorce papers. Stacy left me. True, I said earlier that I think I may have been partly responsible for driving her away, but what did Painful Pee Guy do to drive HIS wife away? It drove me nuts that here was this man of God who said God didn't give a damn about him, the guy's wife left him, he was so distraught that he tried to off himself slowly and agonizingly by drinking antifreeze, and the guy had nobody on his side except me. I think he WANTED to suffer. He thought that he had caused his wife so much anguish that he deserved to die, and not without suffering horribly beforehand. He had no visitors, nobody who cared a damn about him except me. Hell, that WAS me years ago. I was right where he was, in a hospital bed critically ill, in agony begging for narcotics and in acute renal failure because of the rhabdo due to my leg infarction. The only person who did give a damn about me was Stacy and she showed her true colors when she made a treatment decision behind my back that I never wanted. I used to think that I deserved the suffering that her treatment decision caused me, but I don't think that anymore. However, I do still think about why Mom and Dad never came to visit me in the hospital; why Stacy was my only real support then. Painful Pee Guy had nobody except me. One thing he did say that stuck out in my mind, that I'll never forget, and that is worth mentioning here, was that almost all of his congregation at his church blew him off after they found out why his wife divorced him. He had no kids, no siblings, no wife anymore, apparently no other friends, and no support from his congregation. Other than the congregation part, the rest of this was painfully familiar.

I listened to everything else that he had to say before the IV ethanol knocked him out. I wasn't sure what I could say that would help him but I guess it helped him just to have me there to listen to him. I'm really good at listening, and I'm REALLY good at reading body language, and sometimes all that is needed is for someone to just listen to the words and pay attention to the body language.

I think Cuddy thinks she always has to try to "help" me care about other people more, but she has no idea how much I really do care. This was just another example of what I said earlier - if they think I don't like to deal with people because of the leg, or for whatever reason they're unwilling to look underneath the surface and see me for who I really am, let 'em think whatever they want to think. I don't care.

Yes, I sat in Painful Pee Guy's room for hours and just listened to him until he fell asleep under the influence of the IV ethanol and the small dose of morphine that my team gave him earlier. After he fell asleep, I stayed there with him even longer and did nothing but think about what I'd heard. I guess if the hospital had closed circuit TV in his room, then I could have charged people to see the tape to prove that yes, I really did go into a patient's room without my PSP.

Yes, there really is more to me than the thin superficial layer of snark that everyone sees but almost nobody wants to look beneath.

Yes, patients can and do have therapeutic interactions with me and survive without my having bitten their heads off and without suffering lasting and everlasting damage on the occasion that I may have called them morons or idiots.

Yes, I do occasionally call people morons or idiots because I believe in truth; I believe in calling a spade a spade. Whether other people consider that a good quality in me or not is not my concern.

Painful Pee Guy may have done a moronic thing, but he sure turned out to be anything BUT a moron.

And yes, switching my practice to nephrology was absolutely the best career move I have ever made!


	6. As I was saying

**A/N – Still don't own any of the characters, and this work is entirely fictional and for fun. Still remains a bit AU, and I'm still trying to keep House as in character as possible. Enjoy and review, please! I'm not much on cliffhangers and this story doesn't seem suited for cliffhangers, but we're getting close to some real juicy stuff in the next chapter or two so hang in there! After watching Private Lives Monday night, I knew this would be the kind of thing Wilson would love to get his hands on, so I threw in something along those lines at the end of this chapter. Rating is going to stay T and I don't anticipate that will change. There are two curse words that pop up once in awhile and they're pertinent to the story, but I don't write smut, so I don't anticipate that there will be any more curse words elsewhere in the story..**

Chapter 6

As I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons I decided to switch primarily to nephrology was because, according to the law of supply and demand, the supply of nephrologists is greater, so the demand on my time would presumably be less. Presumably that would also mean that the physical demands on me would be less, too. I knew that the puzzles would be just as difficult to solve, and the cases just as interesting. When we were still knee deep in all the other odd diagnostics cases, I remember telling Foreman once that "I have a nine to three job too"; that one liner was just my way of trying to make him quit bugging me about the hours I really did put in. The last thing I wanted was for my team to know how much it really hurt me to be on my feet 12 or more hours a day, and even worse, for them to think that I couldn't handle that.

So we started our nephrology practice with Painful Pee Guy. My diagnostics fellows, Cameron, Chase, Foreman, and Thirteen (Taub had left by then to go back to private practice in plastic and reconstructive surgery) were still my employees, and they still took on the diagnostics cases since their fellowships were in diagnostics, and Foreman supervised most of the diagnostics cases leaving me to handle the nephrology part of our practice. I still helped out with the most challenging of diagnostics cases but Foreman really didn't need my help all that much, thank God (if there is one).

Anyway, back to Painful Pee Guy. Other than the antifreeze part, looking at him was like looking in a damn mirror. We got him on the IV ethanol and dialysis and a lot of other stuff in time to stop any further kidney damage, but what was done was done and could not be undone. Fortunately his kidneys did recover enough to the point that he could urinate normally, without pain, and he didn't need dialysis for all that long.

Mentally, though, how in the hell was I going to help this guy when I couldn't even really entirely help myself? Another part of the puzzle I needed to solve.

That's why I found myself spending hours at his bedside, trying to help him with his secret. The secret that drove his wife away, the secret that he felt he could only deal with by killing himself slowly. The secret that made him think he had to suffer painfully while he tried to kill himself.

I briefly thought about suicide a few times in my life, but actual suicide is for sissies. Suicide is for people who are afraid to deal with their problems any other way. It's the easy way out. I've always said that the easy way out isn't always the right way. True, I've done crazy things that some people probably have interpreted as suicide attempts. I guess the worst one was when I shot myself up full of insulin last year in an attempt to stop hallucinating. None of these were intended to result in my death. I've always tried to push these things out of my mind but now that I'm writing this all down, I must admit it would have been easy for others to think I was trying to off myself.

Having said that, though, now I wonder why in the world nobody had me admitted to psych involuntarily after I did the insulin? I did the insulin because I was hallucinating, and it was an attempt to stop the hallucinations, but someone who's hallucinating is usually not able to make rational decisions. Any idiot knows you don't ask an irrational person to make a rational decision. I SHOULD have been admitted involuntarily, immediately after that, not allowed to physically recover and then just go home. I wasn't in my right mind. I wasn't able to see that at the time, but Wilson should have.

I thought about that the most, while I was sitting by Painful Pee Guy's bed those first hours. Except for the ethylene glycol part, that could so easily have been me laying there. Up until a year or so ago I'd always said psychiatry is mostly useless but Nolan made me realize I was at least a little bit wrong about that. I did the kind and merciful thing and called a psych consult for Painful Pee Guy. I called Nolan and he hooked me up with a local guy on staff at PPTH. When I had the rape victim in the clinic years back, I called a psych consult on her and the idiot psych doc was completely useless. As much as I never would have admitted it out loud to anyone else a year or so ago that I'd ever call another psych consult on any patient, I'm glad Nolan is one of the few psych docs I secretly trust.

Hey WILSON!!!

I see you! Put this book down! I know you're reading it. I also know you already ate those pancakes you made this morning. I secretly put Ex Lax in yours. Don't touch my book again or I'll tell everyone you plastered John Denver and the Muppets posters all over the bedroom that you painted pink. Have fun pooping your brains out!


	7. Painful Pee Guy's dirty little secret

Chapter 7

**A/N – remember this is House writing an autobiography, so I (the author) am not calling you (my readers) morons or idiots– all references to the words "moron" and "idiot" are coming from the character, not from me **

**Still don't own any of the characters – don't sue me…**

**There is a little tame smut and some tame drug use mentioned in this chapter which is pertinent to the story and it won't get any worse than this, so I'm keeping the T rating. Enjoy!**

Should I trust that Wilson has now dropped this book that he never should have picked up in the first place? Guess we'll find out sooner or later.

Back to me again.

After Painful Pee Guy, I had no trouble getting juicy nephrology referrals and I was in the catbird's seat as far as being able to set hours for myself. After Painful Pee Guy, I could limit my nephrology practice size to something that my leg could handle, and I had enough support from the other nephrologists at PPTH that they agreed to help with my on call schedule. Yes, Virginia, there are a few other docs I secretly admire besides myself!

Since I know this book will eventually get into the hands of some other morons who shouldn't be reading it, probably courtesy of Wilson, INSERT HERE – nephrologist = kidney doctor.

Even after Painful Pee Guy, and after Mayfield, I'm still struggling with this whole idea of expressing my feelings in writing or any other way. This is unbelievably strange territory for me, just writing my feelings down. But hell, I'm doing it, so might as well dive in all the way. It's getting kind of cathartic.

Painful Pee Guy came of age in the 1970s and did what a lot of teenagers in the 70's (myself included) did. Some booze, a lot of pot and a little (or more than a little) acid, plus a few other pleasures, at some Dead concerts that he started going to when he was in the throes of teenagery angst. He told me that's how he met the future ex Mrs. Painful Pee Guy – at a Dead concert. Oh, the fun of sitting in the rain getting wasted (and enjoying other pleasures) during those marathon Dead concerts! Generations of kids were conceived at Dead concerts. Painful Pee Guy told his future ex that he had no secrets from her. I guess he figured why would she think he ever had any secrets to keep from her when they dropped acid and got naked in the rain, in public in front of thousands of other similarly behaving fans, together.

Painful Pee Guy's precious little secret had to do with the fun he had with a few other girls at one such concert. Roadies used to videotape almost every Dead concert then, just as they do now. In the days before the Internet and Youtube, roadies would sometimes sell or give out videotapes of previous concerts during almost every show. Painful Pee Guy found video evidence of his – shall we say _misbehavior_ – on one of the videotapes. He was videotaped telling them he wanted to do some "really nasty stuff" and apparently he did it. What he didn't do is tell the future ex Mrs. Painful Pee Guy anything about any of this. Somehow or another, that videotape never got into Mrs. PPG's hands, however…

One of the girls developed a bun in the oven and Painful Pee Guy found out about it when she and the little bun showed up in his church about ten years later, during an Altar call. The little bun was ten years old and the spitting image of Painful Pee Guy. Apparently Mrs. Painful Pee Guy noticed the likeness, but blew it off as an interesting coincidence. Mr. PPG on the other hand recognized the girl right away and secretly knew the kid had to be his. Oh, the Altar call went fine and dandy – Mr. PPG laid hands on her, and the girl, now a woman, proclaimed in tears that she had been saved and born again in the Blood of Christ. What a show that must have been.

Mrs. PPG again noticed the kid's likeness to her husband, but said nothing to anyone.

Mr. PPG didn't say a word either.

On the kid's 16th birthday the kid (a boy, but who cares) declared his intent to be baptised at Mr. PPG's church.

Mrs. PPG opened the mail and saw the baptismal application, listing the mom's name, the kid's name, the intent for baptism, the July 2nd, 1977 birth date, the city and state of birth (Asbury Park, New Jersey… Mrs. PPG remembered the Dead concert they went to in Asbury Park in 1977… Dad's name was left blank.

Mrs. PPG thought again about it, but still wasn't entirely sure about the connection, apparently, because she put the baptism paperwork on his desktop and left it alone.

Apparently quite some time went by after the kid's baptism. The kid turned out to be a model Christian – went to all the youth group stuff, all the bible studies, sang in the youth praise band, even babysat the PPG couple's dog when they needed it.

Apparently the kid's mom was satisfied with things as they were and never tried to out him as the dad, and never tried to sue him for child support. I think there must be a label worse than idiot that would have applied in her case.

Mr. PPG's conscience apparently led him eventually to tell Mrs. PPG that the kid was his, but not until the kid's wedding plans forced his hand.

When the kid applied for marriage at the church he loved so well, the kid apparently decided to swipe some DNA to prove once and for all whether or not Mr. PPG was his father (sound familiar?) so that he could fill in the marriage application with his mom's AND his dad's name.

The kid swiped Mr. PPG's dentures at a church picnic when Mr. PPG popped them out of his mouth at the picnic table, after a big meal in the heat of the day. Apparently Mr. PPG's idea of what is proper to do in public hadn't changed a whole lot since the 70's. Mr. PPG got up to go to the bathroom and the dentures disappeared.

Enough DNA was produced from the dentures to out Mr. PPG as the kid's dad.

Mrs. PPG didn't take too well to finding out that the kid she taught in Sunday school, the kid she took with all the other kids to tons of church youth group outings for years, the kid she set up the baptism for, was her husband's secret love child.

The soon-to-be-ex Mrs. PPG couldn't take the embarrassment of having the whole church discover her husband's dirty lie, which they did when the kid's wedding plans were published in the newspaper Turns out the kid's mom had a wicked side to her. Mrs. PPG left her husband and took most of his congregation with her.

Which left him without a church, without a wife or any hope of reconciling their marriage, and pretty much without any hopes of pastoring any other churches once they found out about his _indiscretion_.

And left him so despondent he felt that his only choice was to off himself and cause himself as much agony as possible in the process, as if his suffering and death would somehow or another make things right again. Antifreeze poisoning wasn't something he came up with on the spur of the moment. No, he researched his suicide options thoroughly.

So, Painful Pee Guy was not truly a moron. But he did moronic things. Reminded me of me yet again, especially when I snipped off part of my adoptive dad's earlobe while he was laid out in his casket during his funeral, just to run MY DNA test. That kid knew Mr. PPG had to be his biological dad with as much certainty as I knew my "dad" WASN'T my biological father. That kid didn't need DNA evidence to prove anything to himself. Neither did I. But we both had to do what we did, and look at the consequences that kid's actions had on Painful Pee Guy.

Sidebar - How am I going to deal with the idiots who are no doubt going to get a hold of this? I said before that nobody would ever listen to me when I even thought about opening up verbally. As I go along writing this, several things occur to me.

I still value my intelligence over almost everything else – in fact, let's say I do value it over everything else.

I'm even more convinced now that everyone lies, but they don't lie all the time.

I'm not writing this down because it's an assignment from Nolan, but let's keep that our secret, shall we? Since it'll probably end up in the hands of morons eventually anyway, I'll probably have to make up some lie about why I wrote this, so let's pretend Nolan did assign me to do it. Everyone would believe that anyway.

Hell, I should write this in invisible ink that requires a black light to read. Oh, the joys of chicanery – everyone can't wait to find out what secrets I'm writing, but the pages are blank…


	8. Ditzy Dora

Chapter 8

**A/N – remember this is House writing an autobiography, so I (the author) am not calling you (my readers) morons or idiots– all references to the words "moron" and "idiot" are coming from the character, not from me **

**Still don't own any of the characters – don't sue me…**

**More warning – I hate the Lucas character, and it shows in this chapter… and I made a minor correction so that this chapter flows more smoothly into chapter 9.**

Well, Cuddy found out I was writing this and probably couldn't wait to go home and blab to Lucas. Lucas then apparently told everyone in the hospital. See, I put a fake Lupus book cover on it, just to see what anyone would think should they walk in on me while I was reading what I had written. I was dozing in my Eames chair with this volume on my lap. Cuddy walked by and saw it, and ran in like a bat out of hell thinking I was back popping the pills I used to hide in my Lupus textbook. She screamed; I guess she thought I OD'd or something. She scared the living daylights out of me, and when she startled me awake, I dropped the book and the cover fell off. She picked it up and saw what I had written. All she did was give me the book back, and walk out of my office chuckling quietly to herself. She said nothing to me. She walked right by Wilson's office and he was in his office, but she didn't say anything to him either. Just walked down the hall chuckling. Wilson was talking to a patient and had his door closed. When we got home that night, Wilson didn't say anything. Cuddy hadn't told him, but obviously she didn't have to because he already knew what I was writing. True to his good, kind hearted self, he let me go back to writing in peace and didn't say anything.

The next day I walked in to my office, turned my laptop on, opened my email, and was deluged with hundreds of emails from almost every moron and idiot in the whole hospital. I opened a few of them and they started with "Dear Diary… Today House jerked me around by…." Even Blue the janitor had to chime in with some stupid spam.

Whoever sets up email accounts ought to measure these idiots' IQs before giving them email access. I say nobody with an IQ less than 100 should have access to email.

So I had to put this down long enough, hopefully, to give these idiots time to forget. I didn't think Cuddy would have blabbed to anyone, but I wouldn't put it past stupid Lucas to email all of her other department heads. Given her idiotic boy toy's abysmal IQ, I'm sure he forgot about it the minute he shut off his laptop. I figured I'd have to give Cuddy and the rest of her minions a little more time.

Back to my story.

One of my mottoes is "If you can't figure out what cleaning solution is for, don't buy it." Every time my team has had to search a home, they look under the kitchen sink. Nine point nine times out of ten, we find many bottles of cleaning solution there. These homes are also usually so filthy and full of mold that no evidence can be found that any of the cleaning solution has ever been used for its intended purpose.

Here's what I mean. Ditzy Dora left her kids home alone, unsupervised, long enough for one of the precious little tykes to get into the spray window cleaner that she left under the sink. The amount necessary to cause damage sometimes depends on the person's size, so usually it doesn't take much for a little child to become poisoned. Unfortunately Ditzy Dora's slovenly habits around the house meant that she rarely looked under the kitchen sink for anything, let alone a bottle of window cleaner. Little Junior must have gone quite some time with a dry diaper before mom realized that Junior's incessant crying wasn't because he was wet. We wound up seeing him in our ER after she brought Junior in because of his incessant screaming. I guess Ditzy didn't think there was anything wrong with a diaper that hadn't been changed because it was dry for two days. Who knows, maybe she was a crack ho or something.

So we took a history and did a detailed physical examination. The child was screaming but also having a really hard time breathing, due to congestion from fluid building up in his lungs. Fluid that he should have peed out. Cameron stuck an IV in him, drew a tox screen and other labs, and gave him some medication to make him pee. An hour went by and the diaper stayed dry. Chase put him on oxygen and Foreman went out to talk to the mom. Foreman went down the checklist of things to ask parents when their kids are sick, and when he asked her if the kid got into any medication bottles or cleaning solutions or anything like that, of course the idiot mom said no. She could have told the truth and said she didn't know, but given the fact that she left the little darlings unsupervised, it's no surprise that she lied.

I did a renal ultrasound and didn't see anything wrong. So then the train ride started, with the train of diagnostic tests mostly revealing nothing out of the ordinary. It was while the kid was screaming through the fourth test, in the CT scanner, that I couldn't take the screaming anymore. I went in there to scream back at the kid and while I was leaning over the kid's face, I had my "aha" moment and smelled it on his breath. Thirteen called me at the same time. She'd been to the home and found the open bottle of window cleaner, along with the filthy windows that obviously hadn't seen any window cleaner in QUITE some time. The cleaner that mom should have been using on Junior's filthy bedroom windows was, instead, coursing through his arteries, capillaries and veins. The mouth is full of capillaries so that's why the odor of the breath can often give a clue as to what is wrong.

I don't really remember what happened after I talked to the mom and then sent the kid to radiology again to have a dialysis catheter put in. I know mom followed me into my office and I don't remember anything after that for the next day or so.

I had been hit by several patients or patient relatives before I switched my practice to nephrology. Even though people have told me I deserved it, I don't think I did. I don't think I ever said anything that made me deserve to be hit by anybody. I used to wonder why they would hit a cripple, but now I see that the "cripple" factor wasn't even part of the question. The real question was, why would they hit the doctor who is trying to save them? The few hits I took were from people who failed to recognize that their plight wasn't my fault or my team's fault. Sometimes, the more dire the straits, the more driven we have to be in our efforts to diagnose the patient. When we know we're being lied to or when we know that we're not getting the whole story, we have to use more effective methods to get the information we need.

I told Ditzy Dora that her kid drank the cleaner under her sink that she had never used. I told her that her kid would live, but we'd have to start maintenance kidney dialysis and start looking for a kidney donor. I also told her that, under state law, I was required to call the division of family services on her for her lack of supervision of her kids.

I don't really remember what else I must have said to Ditzy Dora but while she was beating me with my cane, kicking me and hitting me with anything else she could reach, chances are pretty good I used the words "crack ho", "moron", "idiot", and maybe even the B word. While Ditzy Dora was using me for batting practice, my team was starting the kid's first dialysis session and saving his life.


	9. Catharsis

**A/N – rating won't change, but there are a few tame curse words which are pertinent to the story. Consider yourself warned. **

**Still hate the Lucas character, and it still shows. I could not resist the parting shot at the end.**

**This is most likely the last chapter. I think this is a natural ending point for the story.**

**Don't own the show or any of the characters. Standard disclaimer applies.**

**Please review!**

Chapter 9

As I said before, I've been hit by a few patients. Ditzy Dora was the last. Most docs go their entire career without being assaulted by patients. They think I don't have any people skills or those that I do have need a lot of improving. Some people, Wilson included, have tried to discuss this subject with me, have tried to dissect why I trigger this reaction in some people. Cuddy once said that she initially thought I just didn't know how to interact with people, how to have a good social contract, but then she realized that when I did interact, I knew just where and how deep to drive the stick in.

Another example of Cuddy not even bothering to look under the surface and see me for who I am.

Some might point to the fact that Ditzy Dora assaulted me after I was discharged from Mayfield as proof that I really haven't changed all that much.

Well screw 'em. Nobody ever said that recovery from addiction (and, in my case, depression and psychosis brought on by the addiction) is easy, quick, or without relapses. I haven't yet had a Vicodin relapse even though my pain sometimes reaches such intolerable levels that I don't know what else to do. My personality has not changed, but my actions have (or at least that is my goal). Nobody is perfect, and everybody makes mistakes, and while I would never say it out loud to anyone except Nolan, I'll admit that I could have avoided the ass whipping I took from Ditzy Dora by choosing my words a little more carefully. I'm not going to belabor that point. Nolan's advice to apologize and then move on must be sinking in. Dora, you didn't deserve being made to feel like a second class mom because of one mistake, and I didn't deserve the batting practice you dished out on me.

There, done, deal with it and move on. I am changing.

I've never been one to show weakness and when I'm having my worst pain days, I still go to work but I don't let my team know how much pain I'm in. I was raised in a time when boys were, by and large, made to feel that showing pain or weakness or silly emotions made you a weakling. A sissy. I don't want my team thinking I'm weak or vulnerable. It's just not in my nature. It's not in my nature to go crying on anyone's shoulder and, while I used to pop Vicodin in full view of everyone, on my worst pain days, I'd do my damndest never to let it show just how bad I was hurting. Even after Mayfield, after Nolan, I'm still like that because that's my personality. I'm not ashamed of that character trait but what I'm particularly proud of is that I have learned that there is a right time and a wrong time to show vulnerability. An example of a right time is in private with my therapist. An example of a wrong time is in public, in front of people who are already too stressed out dealing with their own issues, like my team when they're stressed out trying to diagnose a critically ill person or like a patient's family when they're stressed out trying to deal with a critical illness. I'll probably slip up once in awhile like I did with Ditzy Dora but I think that the difference between "me now" and "me before Nolan" is that "me now" knows how to accept the mistake, deal with it and move on.

I guess the fact that I'm enjoying this figurative catharsis and not spending all my time thinking of ways to spike Lucas' coffee with various laxatives (ha ha – get it? If I have to spell out "literal catharsis" then it takes all the fun out) is proof that I'm doing just that. Have a nice day!

The end


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